Television and print still dominate marketing strategies
but companies have to work harder to get their messages out

When Martin Sansregret worked on advertising campaigns ten
years ago, big marketers typically used a "hard sell,"
approach in their television commercials.

"It was almost a formula," joked Sansregret, planning
director at Bos, one of Quebec's hottest advertising agencies.
"Every commercial mentioned the product four times, showed
it seven times and featured lots of happy people using it."

But according to Sansregret, "hard sell" is out.

"You can't do that today," Sansregret said. "Customers
get exposed to so much advertising, you'd turn them off. You
have to grab their attention by using humor, celebrities or through
a highly visual approach."

Marketing is by definition an evolving discipline. Successful
marketers shift strategies constantly to adapt to customers'
changing lives. To understand some of the key trends, we convened
four of the city's top industry pros and asked them to share
their secrets.

The panel included Sansregret, Don Baker, president of Baker-Blais
Marketing, David Béland, a media consultant with Carat
Expert and Patrick Hadsipantelis, an advertising director at
Microcell Solutions.

All agreed that today's consumer is increasingly sophisticated,
tougher to reach and far more in tune with what's happening around
the world than ever before.

Ironically, the consequences of the country's biggest demographic
trend --Canada's aging population --are so well researched and
tracked by marketers today, that they were considered givens
and scarcely mentioned by panel members.

Far more important are the country's youth, who drive consumption
and set trends, not only for their generation, but for others
too. And today's youth have a broad outlook.

"You used to be able to understand Quebecers by referring
to local culture and developments," said Sansregret. "That's
no longer true. Trends are much more global today."

Sansregret cited a recent Parti Quebécois report, which
said that younger Quebecers are shifting their focus from sovereignty
to international developments such as global warming.

Other trends mentioned included an increasingly pronounced
split between urban and rural consumers, as evidenced by the
increasingly multicultural mixes in big cities. "Ethical
consumption," of products produced by companies who respect
strict environmental and labor standards is also in vogue.

Ironically, marketers are mostly using traditional methods
to reach today's changing consumers. Television and print advertising
still dominate, in large part because that's where the eyeballs
are. Internet advertising, once filled with big promise, still
doesn't appear to have made a significant impact, though everyone
continues to pay it lip service. But despite the fact that the
ad categories are still more or less the same, spending within
them is not, said Béland.

One example is television, which is seeing continued migration
of viewers toward specialty channels catering to specific sub
groups such as men, sports lovers, or fans of niche programming
such as mysteries or classics.

"Businesses are watching the money they spend much more,"
Béland said. "They want to make sure that they are
reaching their potential customers, not people who won't buy
their products."

According to Hadsipantelis, marketers are also using increasingly
sophisticated techniques to judge advertising effectiveness.

"We find that success in our sales efforts correlates
strongly with success in our advertising campaigns, so we measure
everything," said Hadsipantelis. "We are constantly
polling to quantify advertising recall levels, top of mind awareness
and (whether the consumer) understood the message,"

But advertisers don't just have to work harder to make commercials
more creative, they have to make more of them.

"The life-span of a TV commercial is shorter than it
used to be," said Hadsipantelis. "People get bored
quicker and you have to give them something new all the time."

Canada's increasing multi-cultural mix, --which crystallized
recently when Chinese replaced French as the second most widely
spoken language in Canada outside of Quebec, --is also affecting
Microcell's marketing. The company now produces brochures and
offers voice mail services in Mandarin and Cantonese.

The large volume of advertising that consumers are exposed
to poses a special dilemma for today's marketers, who are under
pressure to go to increasingly audacious levels to get noticed.

But according to Sansregret, these efforts amount mostly to
a waste of time.

"Companies are much better off if they come up with a
unique selling proposition that distinguishes themselves from
the pack," Sansregret said. "Then they should market
their product, using one big, simple and easy-to-understand idea."

The heavy advertising that consumers are exposed to is making
them increasingly numb. As a result, advertisers are focusing
on the few remaining moments when consumers are alone. For example
more money is being put into bigger and more creative billboards
in high traffic areas.

According to Baker, marketers are also turning to direct marketing
to reach highly targeted segments using customized promotions.
These promotions are particularly useful in the pharmaceutical
industry, where companies often have to reach a segmented group
such as people who suffer from a particular ailment. Even so,
standing out remains an increasing challenge.

"It's the "purple elephant" thing," Baker
said. "These days to get noticed, it's not enough to have
an elephant, because everyone got one of those. To stand out,
the elephant has to be purple too."